Trump, Rubio seek a deal with Havana: Has the US-Cuba saga reached its finale?

Cuba is exotic — a fantasy set in the tropics. It occupies an outsized place in the American imagination, from “The Godfather Part II” to “Scarface” to James Bond’s ”No Time to Die.”

And now, the movie magic continues.

This time, a child of Cuban immigrants plays the U.S. secretary of State. President Trump is in the lead role, eyes wide as he anticipates realizing a nearly 70-year-old U.S. dream of ending the communist regime founded by Fidel Castro.

Trump is so excited to be cast as the president who defeats the communists that he recently described the impoverished island with no military might as “an unusual and extraordinary threat.” 

How is that true? He did not say. Villains from Russia, China and Iran are not exactly rushing to help Cuba in its current economic crisis. The bad guys are not positioning missiles there this time.

Cuba is approaching economic collapse and looks feeble. Since the U.S. ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, they have been short of oil. That has led to food scarcity and blackouts. Experts warn of a crisis as people flee the island, spreading unrest throughout the Caribbean, Florida and the Gulf Coast.

Mexico’s president heightened the drama when she stood up to Trump. The U.S. shutdown of oil imports to Cuba was “unjust,” she said defiantly. She added, “You cannot strangle a people like this. They don’t have fuel for hospitals, for schools.” 

That’s her story. But Trump is watching a different movie. He sees himself as a hero coming to the rescue of Cubans who fled an oppressive regime.

“We have a lot of great Cuban Americans, and they’re going to be very happy when they’re going to be able to go back and say hello to their relatives,” Trump said. “I’m very interested in the people that are here that were treated so badly by Castro.”

A handsome child of those people is Trump’s sidekick, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. 

His parents were born in Cuba. He rose in Florida politics as a young voice for residents of Miami’s “Little Havana,” who viewed Castro as the devil. He sometimes ventured into self-aggrandizing fantasy by calling himself a son of Cuban exiles even though his parents left Cuba before Castro’s 1959 revolution.

Axios reported last week that Rubio is now in secret talks with a member of the ruling Castro family on the future of the famously anti-American island.

It is quite the movie moment, a tear-jerker, to see Rubio working to achieve his family’s dream and create a legacy for himself by ending the authoritarian regime in Cuba. Before the rise of Trump as the dominant figure in Republican politics, then-Senator Rubio (R-Fla.) was open to immigration reform but he always opposed détente with Castro. 

The backstory of volatile exchanges between Cuba and the U.S. includes bitter feelings among a diaspora that fled Castro’s corruption. Just as dramatic is the parallel fight by populists in Latin countries against colonialism and capitalist dominance by American oil companies, the owners of fruit plantations, and casino operators.

For decades, presidents of both parties failed to fix the troubled relationship with Cuba. President Kennedy’s withdrawal of air cover at the Bay of Pigs doomed the invasion. Had President Clinton handled the Elian Gonzalez case differently, his vice president, Al Gore, might have carried Florida in the 2000 presidential race. Then the world would have avoided “Hanging Chads” and a ruling by the Republican-majority Supreme Court that gave the win to President George W. Bush.

Those presidents, all Democrats, said their Cuba policy was based on restoring democracy and human rights to the little island. They also wanted to know that America’s enemies and rival military powers, Russia and China, did not have a hangout in the house next door.

Here, the movie cuts to a flashback: President Obama moves away from threats, boycotts and sanctions. He offers a friendly hand to Cuban leader Raúl Castro at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in South Africa in 2013. And then in 2015, Obama held face-to-face talks with the Cuban leader in Panama. It was the first time since 1956 that an American president talked directly with a Cuban leader. It came as Castro was ill, soon to die in 2016.

Obama opened the door for Americans to travel to Cuba. He believed American academics, tourists and journalists visiting Cuba would advertise the benefits of free speech and the prosperity that comes with free commerce.

But the long-term returns never materialized.

Rubio is now picking up on aspects of the Obama strategy but avoiding Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel. Instead, he is personally reaching out to the Castro family, now led by Fidel’s brother, Raúl Castro. 

According to news reports, Rubio is proposing an end to the U.S. oil embargo and sanctions if Cuba agrees to allow American businesses in. With Raúl in bad health, Rubio’s negotiating partner is his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

What is known is that any deal will feature a Trump victory dance. Cue scenes of Rubio in tears and Trump comparing the U.S. return to Havana to the historic fall of the Berlin Wall.

Juan Williams is senior political analyst for Fox News Channel and a prize-winning civil rights historian. He is the author of the new book “New Prize for These Eyes: The Rise of America’s Second Civil Rights Movement.”

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